


and maybe on another night, we were lovers in another life

by janie_tangerine



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: (that's why it's not for cersei fans), Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Birthday Party, Brienne of Tarth is the Best, Dreams, Dreamsharing, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Knights - Freeform, Oathkeepers Secret Santa, Reincarnation, Soulmates, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, canon-like child abuse except way less detailed, jaime is a hopeless romantic idek, jc isn't a thing but she's still terrible so, not for cersei fans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:07:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21904963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: It’s been years. She feels like a very lively ghost that has taken his heart the moment she asked him if he needed help so long ago, or maybe she had the moment he saw her in that armor with her fingers wrapped around the sword’s handle like the most skilled of knights, and he wants to tell her it’ll always be hers —But in real life, not in dreams.He wants to find her so badly, but it’s not like he has anyone to ask for help with it, not when if his father finds out that his soulmate went to a public school that smelled of detergent he’d make sure that they never actually meet.One day, he tells himself.One day he will, and he’ll give her flowers that aren’t roses and he’ll tell her she has the most astonishing eyes.Not that patience was ever his greatest quality, and he hates that the universe seems bent on teaching that to him, but —He will find her.He will.Or: in which they dream of each other for a long time.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister & Tyrion Lannister, Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 58
Kudos: 401
Collections: Oathkeepers Secret Santa 2019





	and maybe on another night, we were lovers in another life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zarabeth22](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zarabeth22/gifts).



> aaand this is my humble contribution to the Oathkeepers Secret Santa exchange on discord - my recipient was Minerva :D you mentioned you liked those two dreaming of each other and idk this was the very first plot I thought of and eventually it was what worked out, I tried to put in as many as the preferred secondary characters I could - sorry if it's not really angst but it does have the happy ending ;) merry christmas and I hope you like it!
> 
> Other than that, nothing belongs to me (I wish), the title is from a Brian Fallon song from which I might have recycled a line or two because it really fit the mood and I'll now saunter back downwards as usual ;) <333

1.

The first time Brienne dreams of _him_ , it’s a few days after her ninth birthday.

(She’s already way taller than everyone in her class. She invited them all for a party. No one came. Dad said that it’s their loss and they’ll eat cake for the next two weeks, and she had sort of been cheered up at the thought, but still. She’s felt like crying every time she _thinks_ about it since then.)

It’s… a strange dream. A _sad_ one. She’s in the hallway of what looks like an extremely fancy place — a villa, most likely, given how large it is. It’s thrice the size of _their_ only one at home. It’s night, so she can’t see clearly, but it has tapestries all over the walls, crimson embroidered in gold.

Brienne can’t help thinking it’s tacky, and not just a bit. It also feels… strange. Whenever she dreams something, it always feels like it’s not quite real, as it should be, but in this one dream, the air is too warm and too heavy and if she touches the walls she feels the velvet of the tapestry under her fingertips, and she feels like the house doesn’t want her to be there, which — which doesn’t make sense, but even if she pinches her arm she won’t wake up even if she knows she’s dreaming.

She breathes in once, twice, then walks forward. There’s no one, the entire place feels empty, but then she hears someone crying from behind a closed door.

It’s a boy, she thinks, or at least that’s how it sounds, and — it’s not — it doesn’t sound like _she_ did after she realized no one would show up at her party.

She shouldn’t try to open the door, probably, but — but someone is _crying_ , she should try to do something about it, and so she tries. She opens it slowly, walking inside a dark room. The sound is louder. There is barely enough light to see anything, coming in from the window.

It hits a bed, and she sees that there’s indeed a boy under the covers, trying to muffle his sobs with the pillow, and she can only see he has golden-blonde hair and that he should be older than her just from how tall he seems to be under the covers, and she feels horrible as he keeps on crying and obviously trying to keep it in —

And then she wakes up, cold sweat all over her face, just as the alarm rings.

She feels half-sick.

—

That evening, she asks her father.

At the beginning he tells her that it must just have been a particularly vivid one, but then —

“It felt real when I touched the walls, though.”

“What do you mean, _it felt real_?”

“When I dream, usually if I touch anything it just… doesn’t feel like in real life. It just… _doesn’t_. This time, I could feel the velvet. And I could smell the air. It smelled… bad. Like no one had cleaned that tapestries in a long time.”

He says nothing for a long time, thinking about it. Then —

“If it never happens again, it might just have been a dream. But — if it happens another time, the same place, the same _person_ … it could very well be your soulmate.”

Brienne stops dead in her tracks. She knows soulmates _exist_ , even if not everyone eventually finds theirs because not everyone dreams of them and in not every case the dreams actually make sense, and she’s been told enough times at school that certainly _she_ can’t have one, who would even want to be saddled with someone so ugly, and she’s tried to not pay attention to that drivel even if it’s not exactly working out that great —

“My — my soulmate? But how would that even work?”

She sits down on the sofa next to her father, who seems to be fishing for words. “It’s… complicated,” he says, “and I was lucky with your mother because those dreams started when we were in college and she was rooming in front of me, so we recognized each other at once. The sum of it is that… well, you’re dreaming of _that_ one person, but it could be something that’s happened to them a long time ago, something that’s happening to them right now, or it could be about how you will meet. All of those dreams are… well, real. That house you thought smelled bad has to exist somewhere, and at some point that boy must have lived there, but it could have been something that happened to him a long time ago or yesterday. Or you could dream of how he’ll look ten years from now. It’s… not really an exact science.”

Brienne nods, taking it in. “And — if I tried to talk to him in those dreams, what would happen?”

Her father shrugs. “I don’t know. I never tried it out because I dreamed about your mother twice before meeting her, and from what others told me… if it’s something that happened a long time ago the other person might dream about it, too, if it’s happening in real time they might see you even if they’re awake, but honestly? I don’t know. If it happens again and you want to talk to him, maybe you should. It can’t hurt now, can it?”

Brienne says she will, even if she’s not too sure of it. What if he sees her and doesn’t like her, same as _everyone else_?

Admittedly, from what she knows, soulmates should _not_ do that… but she also seems to always have terrible luck when it comes to making friends or talking to people or anything like _that_ , so who assures her that she won’t end up with a soulmate who’ll hate her looks?

She hopes it was a fluke, even if the idea that the universe thinks there is someone out there who’d match her perfectly isn’t… that horrible, after all.

Still.

It’s better if it is.

—

It’s _not_.

The second time she dreams of that house, it smells even worse and people are screaming in the next room over. It’s always the same one. But now she hears a girl’s voice coming from the inside, and she can’t distinguish the words at first but then she does and then she hears the boy from the other time saying _you can’t, you’re hurting him, please don’t_ , and the girl says _he killed our mother_ and _why would you care_ , the boy protests and she calls him stupid and a few other choice words that make Brienne’s stomach turn on itself, and then she moves out of the way as the door slams open and the girl walks out — Brienne just notices that she has a green nightgown and long golden blonde hair same as the boy’s, so she supposes they’re siblings. She did say someone killed _their_ mother, didn’t she?

Then she hears someone else crying from the inside of the room. She slips inside quietly and now that the lights are on, she can see the scene even too well — that boy from her first dream is standing, and yes his hair is _that_ shade of blonde except that the lights in the room are dim and sort of warm, so it _really_ looks like spun gold. He’s standing, wearing some silken pjs that she’s pretty sure would cost a _lot_ , and he’s cradling someone else in his arms. A child with dirtier blonde hair who’s clutching at his neck with tiny hands and who can’t be older than two from the way it looks, they must be brothers and he only stops crying after a while — she hadn’t heard what the boy had told him but it must have worked at some point. The boy puts his brother in the same bed she had seen him sleeping the first time, exhaling as if he’s just run a marathon.

Brienne doesn’t know what she’s doing here, but —

“Can I help you?” She whispers, thinking he won’t hear her, it’s most likely never going to happen —

He turns, looks at her, and yes, he has to be at least ten years old and he’s just a bit shorter than she is, and his skin looks a bit tanned in the low light, while his eyes are a beautiful shade of green, and for a moment she thinks he’ll look at her in disdain like everyone else —

But he just looks awed instead. The hand that had been holding a blanket over his brother lets it fall as he takes a step towards Brienne, and she can see that his face is covered in tear tracks.

“Oh,” he says, in wonder, “you look like her, but younger.”

“Like _her_?” Brienne asks, shaking her head.

He takes a step forward. He doesn’t seem to be bothered that she’s taller. “I — I used to dream of a lady knight,” he whispers. She likes how his voice sounds. “She had blue armor and a golden sword with rubies. She was tall,” he keeps on, “and she had eyes just like yours.”

Brienne has never dreamed of such a person, but from the way he describes this woman who looks like her, just grown up… he sounds like he _did_ like her. Or at least, liked her eyes.

“I’m — not a knight,” she says, wishing she could say otherwise, “but — can I do something for you? Anything.”

He makes a noise in the back of his throat. “I don’t think so. But no one can. He — Mom died when he was born,” he says, nodding towards the child in his bed. “My sister never — she hates him.” He shrugs. “I don’t think she’ll change her mind.”

“But you don’t hate him,” Brienne says.

“No. Of course not. How _could_ I, it’s not like it’s his fault if things went wrong.” He sobs on the last word, and Brienne doesn’t know what she’s done until she has her arms around him and his head hides in the crook of her neck and he clings to her and she can’t help thinking that it doesn’t feel _wrong_. And she can feel his skin — it’s warm under the silk of his shirt — and his hair is clean and soft, so soft under her fingers, and she never — her father always hugs her when she’s sad but when other kids in school were and she tried to do it with them no one wanted her to come close, but now it’s happening and she hates that he’s obviously feeling terrible but it feels nice to know she’s helping him —

Then she hears a noise and he swears under his breath and says _no_ and then he looks up at her and says _my name is Jaime_ —

And then she walks up in her bed, her heart pounding.

 _Jaime_.

So that’s — that’s the name.

She thinks she likes it. It felt right for him.

Everything else around him… didn’t, though.

—

She doesn’t dream of him for months after that.

Then she does again, but —

But he’s not _ten_ now.

And she understands what he meant that time he said she looked like some knight but just younger, because this time she dreams she’s standing in the middle of some Medieval army camp that smells and feels exactly the way a Medieval army camp would, and before she can throw up at the unexpected smell of horse shit filling her lungs, a man with that same gold hair and green eyes walks out of a tent, but —

But he has a white armor and a white cloak that make his blonde hair and green eyes stand out in the pale morning light, he has a soft beard covering his cheeks, and he doesn’t have the right hand, he has some weird golden fake one, and his hair is a bit shorter, but as he walks through the camp Brienne can only think that he looks heroic, like those knights from King Arthur’s stories, and not the kind that falls prey to evil.

No, he looks like the kind who eventually finds out the Holy Grail, she thinks, and someone calls him _Ser Jaime_ and oh, so he has the same name, so it _has_ to be him somewhat, except that it doesn’t make sense —

She wakes up again.

Her heart is _not_ pounding like some kind of locomotive’s engine.

But at this point she has no doubts that _he_ is her soulmate, somehow.

Jaime.

 _Jaime_.

That name really does fit him, she thinks, and she smiles.

2.

He dreams of _her_ more as an adult than — than as Jaime supposes she _is_ right now.

It’s strange — he’s only ever dreamed of her in current times once. It was that time where he was acutely reviving in a nightmare he’d have spared himself that one time he had to get Cersei off their brother physically when Tyrion was two and she didn’t speak to Jaime for the entire next month while he let Tyrion sleep in his bed because he wouldn’t go back to his for nothing, and in real life it had been just the two of them, but in that one dream _she_ had come inside the room and held him close and even if she was obviously younger than him she had been taller and just as broad and it had felt so _right_ , he had woken up with tears stinging his eyes, but not in a bad way.

That was when he had just turned eleven, but —

But _before_ then, he had dreamed of her so many times, he had lost count. She had been older then, around twenty, with those astonishing blue eyes and pale blonde hair, and she always wore that blue armor and that beautiful sword with the golden lion-shaped handle, and she looked every inch like some knight from Arthurian legends, the kind that gets to find the Holy Grail and not the kind that ends up betraying the entire realm.

Every time he walked up to her in those dreams, she just looked at him with that kind face and smiled at him and showed a hint of crooked teeth, and then they always were over, but he saw her fighting a bear in a blood-stained pink dress once. He had just turned thirteen when he had it, and maybe that dress looked terrible on her, but it clung to her small breasts and showed off the muscles in her abdomen, and so maybe he had jerked off thinking about it just after, not that anyone could have known —

Honestly, until she showed up in _that_ one dream at the age she most likely is right now, he hadn’t thought she could be his soulmate.

Except that he had known the moment he had seen her, and he wonders how old is she now — he knows that ages in dreams mean nothing. _He_ was a year older than he actually had been when that episode happened in real life when he dreamed the damned thing.

He wonders why it works like that, but he can’t ask his father and he can’t certainly ask Cersei, not when he had told her that there was no way the both of them could be _any_ kind of soulmate when he certainly didn’t dream of _her_ that way and she’s been cold as ice to him ever since, and it _had_ been painful, especially considering how close they used to be before —

 _Before_ —

Well.

No point in dwelling over _that_. As much as it hurts now, as much as it hurt then, he’s not going back to those three years where they’d argue every other moment and she’d give him the cold shoulder every time he did or said something she didn’t like, and she’s his twin but it never felt _right_ when she said that they were one soul in two bodies and after Tyrion was born there was no way he could think that maybe she was right.

And he doesn’t think he’s ever shown up in _her_ dreams —

Until now.

He’s in a school’s hallway. The entire place smells strange — he went to some private school where everything was pristine and you could look at yourself in the hallway’s marble pavement for how much it shone, while this one has plain white tiles and it smells like disinfectant, now that he finally places it. There are posters on the walls, and reading a few of them he can guess he’s in some public middle school with extremely poor funding but with better teachers than his own, because no one in his class in middle school could have put together the research project poster on the battle of Dunkirk attached to the wall — most of his classmates barely opened a book knowing they’d pass regardless.

Anyway, it’s weird because it looks empty, but it’s snowing outside so certainly it cannot be _summer_ —

Suddenly, he hears laughter coming from the room behind him… except that _someone_ is crying, and it’s a voice he thinks he can recognize.

He turns, opens the door without a care for it and yes, that’s _her_ in the middle of the room, her hands grabbing the side of her desk so hard he thinks she might break the wood considering that she has wider shoulders now than she had in that other dream, even if she can’t be older than twelve. She’s wearing a pale pink dress that maybe doesn’t compliment her much, when it comes to the color, but still, is not _that_ bad, and she’s openly sobbing as the entire class laughs as if the sight is the most amusing in the world, and she has some fresh red roses at her feet, and _what the fuck_ is even going on?

“You _really_ thought he meant it,” one of the other kids laughs, and she bursts out crying again, and one of them is laughing _harder_ , one with bright red hair and blue eyes and a smile on his face Jaime really wants to wipe out, except that the moment he tries to touch one of the other boys his hand goes through his shoulder.

But he did hear _her_ when she talked to him in _his_ dream, didn’t he —

“Hey,” he says, and suddenly she turns towards him, her eyes red-rimmed and filled with tears, and she looks at him with… relief?

So she _has_ recognized him.

He takes a couple of steps closer, and she’s as tall as he is _now_ and she can’t be older than twelve.

“Long time no see,” he tries to joke, and she lets out half a laugh, wiping at his eyes, before breaking down in tears again.

“I’m sorry,” she says, “this isn’t — this happened a while ago.” Her voice is soft, barely audible. “But I guess I can’t get over it.”

“What did they do?” He asks, his hand going to her wrist. She has warm skin. As warm as he remembers.

She shrugs. “Pretended to ask me out. He —” She nods towards the red-headed idiot. “He brought me the flowers. I — I mean, I know he wasn’t — _the right one_ , I wouldn’t have assumed that,” she doesn’t quite look at him, but his heart starts beating faster as she implies that _he_ is, “but I thought — it might be nice to go out with someone at some point. Maybe. No one ever brought me flowers. No one even came the one time I had a birthday party.” She sniffs. “And they all started laughing and said they were sure I’d fall for it, and — I _did_ tell him that I didn’t care and I had a soulmate already. That — didn’t go well.” She shakes her head. “Sorry you had to see it.”

“Fuck them,” he says, his right hand raising upwards, touching her cheek. He wipes away the tear tracks under her eyes, fuck they’re so _pretty_ , he can’t believe these assholes made her cry. “Who cares what they think? You _do_ have a soulmate, after all.” He winks. “And you don’t need any of these assholes.”

“I know,” she nods, “but — I thought — I mean, I never had that many great experiences with people like them, but I always think that some might be different and it never goes —”

“Don’t mind these losers,” he moves closer. “They’re all the same. You’re not losing anything.”

She _does_ laugh a bit, maybe because he’s made himself sound really, _really_ assured that he’s better than all of them, but he _knows_ he is.

“What,” she whispers, “you’re not?”

“Oh, there are no guys like me,” he says, and then he hears a noise and she opens her mouth and shakes her head and oh, she’s waking up, isn’t she —

“My name is Brienne,” she blurts, and then she’s gone and he’s woken up feeling like he could throw up.

Shit.

 _Shit_ , what was that —

The day he meets her, he decides, he’s going to make sure she gives him that asshole’s name and he’s making half of his teeth fly. Or _something_. He wonders how old is she now — she said she always dreamed about _that_ , so she must have been eleven or twelve at that point. Probably. Shit, he remembers that his own classmates were horrid at that age, but not _that_ much.

Admittedly, it was an all guys class because of course his father wouldn’t send him to a mixed school, even a costly one, so he supposes that he hasn’t seen any of them being shits to girls, but still.

What the _fuck_ was that.

He thinks he won’t forget it anytime soon.

—

He hopes to dream of her again soon, in present time, so that at least he can try to talk to her or figure out if they can meet —

But for the next year _all_ his dreams are of that older version of her. The one in the middle ages.

He has a very short dream in which he thinks they’re in the same bath tub together or maybe he’s watching an older version of himself being in the same bath tub with her, and he wakes up when he sees her naked, and —

Yeah. Right. _That_ ends with Jaime sprinting towards the bathroom and jerking himself off and coming against his hand quick enough that it would be embarrassing, should anyone know about it.

Surely those dreams made him understand very, _very_ soon that his type was not slender and petite with narrow shoulders or delicate features. Admittedly, he had found _her_ magnificent from the first time he saw her in a dream when he was six, and that had been it, but how _wouldn’t_ anyone, but _after_ , well, it wasn’t just that he thought she was magnificent. He thought she was _hot_ , scorching hot, and once he dreamed she fought a horde of ice zombies that looked straight out of Tyrion’s _Dungeons and Dragons_ rulebook and killed some fifteen of them at once with that beautiful sword with the golden hilt and he woke up so hard it ached, and that certainly hadn’t paid him a favor when it came to girls throwing themselves at him the moment he went to high school — at least this time it was mixed classes, even if he doesn’t even want to know how much his father is paying for it.

Anyway, girls have thrown themselves at him and he’s turned out every single one because none of them is _her_ and he doesn’t find them attractive anyway, and when he says it’s because he’s waiting to find his soulmate he puts a metaphorical tombstone on his social life because everyone who hears him say that decides that he only talks about old stuff people no one cares about and he’s not interested in doing most of the things his peers seem interested in doing, and from then on people obviously talk to him either to get to his sister, who instead is of course the life of the social life of their entire school, or because of the money, and as much as Cersei calls him an idiot still most of the time, he’s not _such_ an idiot that he can’t see _that_.

Once he dreams about the bath tub again, where she catches the older version of himself that was telling her something important that he can’t quite focus, and he notices how gentle her touch is, and it was the same in that first dream, he remembers _that_ , the one where he told her his name —

He also wants to see her eyes for real, because in his dreams they’re that beautiful shade of blue that he doesn’t think he’s ever seen anywhere else, and he can’t help thinking how could those asshole classmates of hers do _that_ to her and live with having seen her cry because of that, but maybe that’s why Cersei always tells him that _he_ is more of a woman than she is.

He thinks he learned to tune that out, not that there’d be anything wrong with that either way, but still —

He wonders how long it is before he dreams of her again.

He hopes that the next time it’s the kind of dream that shows him _anything_ that might give him a clue about meeting her, finally.

It’s been years. She feels like a very lively ghost that has taken his heart the moment she asked him if he needed help so long ago, or maybe she had the moment he saw her in that armor with her fingers wrapped around the sword’s handle like the most skilled of knights, and he wants to tell her it’ll always be hers —

But in real life, not in dreams.

He wants to find her so badly, but it’s not like he has anyone to ask for help with it, not when if his father finds out that his soulmate went to a public school that smelled of detergent he’d make sure that they _never_ actually meet.

One day, he tells himself.

 _One day_ he will, and he’ll give her flowers that aren’t roses and he’ll tell her she has the most astonishing eyes.

Not that patience was ever his greatest quality, and he hates that the universe seems bent on teaching that to him, but —

He _will_ find her.

He will.

3.

At sixteen, she’s dreamed of _him_ in that beautiful golden armor so many times she has lost count of them. Not so much of him _right now_ , not after that time where he saw what happened with Ronnet Connington and the roses, but she has woken up with sweat all over her face and blood rushing downwards most of _those_ times, but how could it be otherwise? He looks just so — so beautiful and righteous and _fit_ for that role, all knightly and righteous and with that beautiful smile and glinting green eyes, he makes such a beautiful picture she can’t believe that _he_ is her soulmate somehow.

After all, he _was_ right, that time they spoke in that dream — if she had _him_ to look forward to, why would she care for her classmates’s opinions?

And yet, she hasn’t dreamed of him again in a circumstances where she could try to ask him how they can find each other, and as much as she wishes for it, she can’t lose herself in daydreams all of the time. Especially since money is tight and she knows her father is trying to put in more shifts this year because the company he works for isn’t doing that great and everyone got a salary cut — he tried to keep her out of it, but she _knows_.

Which is how she decides to find a part time job and ends up finding an afternoon shift in a coffee shop near her school — it’s a nice place and the owner, Catelyn Stark, not only seems to get her situation but also tells her that while they need a waiter, but since they made a name presenting themselves as an alternative to junk food places for children (as in, they serve everything you would find in a McDonald’s but with actual bio ingredients they get from a relative’s farm or zero range farms, so it’s the same menu but not terribly unhealthy) and they also offer birthday parties packages the way a lot of those restaurants do, if she has a good trial and she wants to make more money, she could put her on helping out her brother with organizing those same parties. Considering that she would only do hours in the afternoon and not in the evening and she’s ahead with _all_ her classes, Brienne takes it at once and her father doesn’t protest too much, not when she tells him she _knows_ that they need the money.

She has a good trial.

By the time spring rolls by, she’s permanently helping out Mrs. Stark’s brother, Edmure, who is apparently terrible at most kitchen work but is objectively gifted when it comes to handling children, and she’s making a quite a bit of money for herself so that her father doesn’t have to worry about _her_ having money to spend for the cinema or clothes or school books, and apparently they can give her more shifts in the summer, so — she supposes things could be worse.

Then, mid-May, Edmure doesn’t even let her put on her apron before he calls her over to the side the moment she walks inside the shop at three PM.

“I know you don’t do weekends,” he says with no preambles, “but do you think that for an extra you might come this Saturday?”

Brienne, whose social life is admittedly not that great unless you count the two friends she has in class who are also _dating_ and therefore don’t invite her over if they’re planning on having alone time — she straight-up told them she’d rather not come at all than feel like the third wheel —, has nothing planned for Saturday.

“Sure,” she says. “What’s happening on Saturday?”

“Birthday party,” Edmure says, “but… well. Someone who comes from a lot of money who has given specific instructions and said we’d get paid ten times the usual fee. And there are twenty people invited.”

Brienne whistles. If they pay _ten times the usual fee_ , which usually covers a certain amount of money for each kid invited, it means they’re making with _one_ party the amount of money they would in a month of regular shop activity, not counting the parties.

“All right,” she says. “So, I should show up on Saturday and try to entertain the kids, if they don’t hate me on sight?”

“Actually,” Edmure said, “the instruction said that the kid in question would love a very specific setting, and I’m shit at arts and crafts but you’re _not_. So, if you’re excused from working upstairs for the next five days, do you think that you can get the party room to look… well. Like a dragon cave or _something_? Because this kid really, _really_ likes dragons, apparently. His brother was adamant on it. Here’s a reference.”

He hands her a piece of paper with the list of things the brother had requested, along with a check for expenses if they need to actually _buy_ fake dragons or something of the kind at some toy shop.

“Well,” she says, “I don’t think it would be too hard. Is it just me or —”

“Cat said she can send you Robb and Jon for help.” Right. Her eldest kids — or at least, Robb is and Jon is a nephew who grew up with them or something of the kind, but they’re both fourteen and they _could_ actually help out — the other Stark children are adorable but probably wouldn’t like this one job.

“All right,” she says. “I can start on my own today and they can help me put decorations up and stuff two days from now. Tomorrow I can go… buy a few dragons, I guess.”

“You’re a lifesaver,” Edmure says, then assures her he’s taking her place today and she can worry about the decor.

 _Holy shit_ , she thinks re-reading the list, _this Tyrion kid really must love that theme_. She takes a step back. They _do_ have a fake cave in the basement that they used for differently themed parties. Can’t be too hard to take it out and find some fake dragon eggs to put inside it. Maybe she could hide some more around the room so the kids can go on a treasure chase or something of the kind. Apparently the kid in question is very well-read and loves riddles, so _that_ could be a thing, Brienne decides. She can teach Robb and Jon to make origami dragons and give one each to the other kids so they can put their names on them and then they could hang more from the ceiling. Maybe she could also run to some bookshop, buy some dragon-themed books and leave them around the room and then if no one wants to take them they could just leave them in the shop for the next book exchange Catelyn usually runs once each month. The list says the kid _really_ likes Tolkien but hated the movies — _huh_ , Brienne thinks, _he’s turning_ nine _and he’s that much into it? Interesting_ —, so she supposes she can maybe find some chocolate money and put it in the cave as well without buying leftover _Hobbit_ merchandise. Though she _could_ find a copy of the One Ring somewhere, she’s pretty sure it can’t be too hard.

She works on it the entire week — she _does_ put Robb and Jon on dragon-making duty, spends two afternoons shopping for the occasion, comes into work Saturday morning to give it the finishing touches and by the time she’s done, she thinks she’s done a nice job. The wall is covered in cheap plastic that is meant to feel like stone and wouldn’t fool anyone but still works for the occasion, she’s put the chocolate money in the fake cave along with a card with the start of the treasure quest riddles, she’s hidden the eggs and the replica of the ring in a small closet that people would notice just by looking but she planned the entire thing so that they would have to walk a _lot_ around the room and in the main one of the shop and the kitchens, but everyone agreed on closing for the afternoon, so there won’t be customers. There are origami dragons hanging from the wall and ready with tag names on a table, the usual chairs they bring out for parties are already in a circle, she put small piles of books around the entire place and overall, she thinks that she has checked each single item in the list.

“Holy shit,” Edmure says as he comes to supervise the result at lunch time, “you’re _good_.”

“Well, thanks,” Brienne smiles, “I guess someone does appreciate my skills. At what time are they coming?”

“The brother who commissioned the entire thing and the kid are showing up at three thirty, his classmates should be around by four. But you’ve been on this the entire week, you don’t need to be here _then_. Just show up at four while I deal with the parents and so on.”

“All right,” she says, “then I guess I’ll go take a shower and wear something nicer than my father’s t-shirts.”

“Yeah, take your time.”

She nods and goes home, feeling like — she doesn’t know _how_ exactly she’s feeling, but she’s had a hunch that this entire birthday party thing is… _important_ in ways that a regular job should not, and she knows that it makes no sense.

Still, she showers, dries her hair wishing for the umpteenth time she could style it into _something_ without it looking ridiculous because it’s too straight and thick, then wears her only nice blue dress which admittedly hasn’t made anyone laugh at openly, so she supposes it will have to do. She doesn’t bother with make-up, she’s shit at it anyway and her father tried, bless him, but he’s worse at it than her, wears a pair of flats so she’s not even _taller_ than usual — fine, it’s nine year olds, but still, she hates towering over them that much —, and heads back to the shop so that she’ll be there a bit before four PM so she can have a feeling of the situation. Usually Edmure just handles the entire thing and she helps him out, brings the kids extra food and so on or looks at them when he’s talking to the parents, but still, she’d like to see what’s going on before the party is supposed to start.

She had expected Edmure to be involved with the parents, admittedly.

Not to wait for her on the entrance.

“Uh, Brienne?” He says, looking… kind of _really_ worried. “I think we have a situation.”

“A… _situation_?”

“Well, no faults on our parts, but… uhm. We’re ten minutes from the start and no one showed up.”

Suddenly, whoever this kid is, Brienne feels a pang of sympathy — she _would_ know how that feels, after all.

“ _No one_?”

“No,” Edmure shakes his head. “And the worst thing is that the kid looks like he had expected it, and — yeah. I mean, I don’t think you can do anything about that, but —”

“I’ve been there,” she says. “Can I go talk to them?”

“Sure. They’re in the main room,” Edmure says and lets her pass, and she hears people talking inside the room as she gets closed, but it’s in hushed tones so she can’t figure it out —

Except that the voices sound familiar, and when she opens the door and walks into the room where she finds two other people only one of them immediately stands up to check who just came, and —

 _And_.

The kid in question is hunched on a chair and suddenly she understands _why_ he didn’t get anyone coming, considering that his feet don’t touch the ground as he wipes at his eyes with tiny hands, and when he looks at her she can see he has mismatched eyes, one black and one —

One the same breathtaking green of _his brother’s_ eyes, and when she looks at _him_ she suddenly stops dead in her tracks. He has longer hair than the last time she dreamed about him, but the color is that same gold and the eyes are that same emerald green and _yes_ it’s his face with those lovely, gorgeous traits —

“ _Jaime_?” She blurts, unable to keep it in.

She hopes she’s not wrong, but he looks _relieved_ as his eyes meet hers and he parts his lips and says —

4.

“ _Brienne_?” He blurts, and then he tells his brother _something_ and pats his back before taking a step closer to her.

“That’d be me,” she says, and oh, he’s just slightly shorter than her _now_ but he’s also plenty damn tall for his age, same as _her_ , and in another moment she’d have had _questions_ , but right now — “Right, uh, we should probably, you know, talk later, but — I work here.”

“You _do_?”

“Yeah. I, uh, was in charge of the decorations. What happened?”

Jaime, figuring that she _does_ remember that first dream, doesn’t waste time with the background as he lowers his voice. “We never actually… did _birthday celebrations_ because y’know, that was when Mom died, too, but this year neither my father nor my sister are around and I knew he wanted to, so I thought I’d go for it and I called the parents of the assholes in his class in school and they all said they’d come, but — yeah. As you can see, they didn’t. And now he’s saying he _knew_ they wouldn’t come and — I might be at a loss.” Also wait, _she_ decorated the entire place? He had thought it was impressive when he walked in, admittedly —

Brienne nods once, looking like she’s considering _something_ —

“Can I talk to him?” She asks.

“Feel free,” he replies, slumping his shoulders. Shit. He wants to do something nice for Tyrion for _once_ , and here he is making things _worse_. Cersei probably was right —

He stops that trail of thought the moment Brienne kneels down in front of his brother.

She’s _tall_ , he had seen it, but she’s doing a damn good job of making herself look… well. Less so. He’s so lost in staring at her back that he misses the introductions, but when he finally puts himself back together she has a hand on the side of Tyrion’s chair.

“Hey,” she says, “first of all… well, I know how it is.”

“You _know_?”

“No one came the one time I threw a birthday party, either,” she says. “Except that it was because I was… too tall, I guess. People are stupid on both sides of the fence.”

Tyrion _does_ laugh at that, even if he’s still sniffing, and wait, _how_ did she do it, nothing he said worked until now, but then again —

 _Then again_ , maybe she would get it more than _him_. It’s not like Jaime ever bothered with parties since he got one every year with Cersei and it was all about her and never about him, but it just… didn’t really feel like anything he should get sad over. While she _has_ been in the same situation.

“That said,” she goes on, “I’m pretty sure we can do better than your classmates.”

Tyrion looks at her _very_ skeptically. “How would you do that?”

“Can you give me half an hour? If you want to think about something else, I left those books around if anyone wanted them, but I think you can have them for now, all things considered.”

Tyrion gives her a small nod and he looks half-hopeful now, even if not wholly convinced. Jaime doesn’t know how the fuck she did it nor how she’s planning to spin this, but —

She stands up and moves towards him. “I suppose _you_ don’t have any friends you can call?” She asks, but she doesn’t sound like she’s presuming that.

He shakes his head. “No,” he says. “I mean, I _know_ people, but they all want to get to my sister, I know that.”

She shudders, and he wonders if she _had_ seen Cersei during that first dream, a long time ago —

“Never mind,” she smiles, “I’ve got this.”

She grabs her cellphone, then looks for a number and gets out of the door while Tyrion looks through some of the books in the corner.

Good. At least he won’t think about his asshole classmates —

“Loras?” Brienne asks. “Yeah, uh, I was wondering, was whatever you and Renly were supposed to do incredibly urgent? You were — oh. Actually, that’s great. No, listen, I’m at work and we had this birthday party this afternoon and no one showed up. Yeah, well, assholes. Just come and bring Shireen with. Uh, yeah, he can come too. No, don’t worry, no one is going to give a single damn about _that_. Do you — if you want to, but I don’t think — yeah, okay, sure. Uh, he likes books. About dragons. You’ve — okay, right, I’ll trust you.”

She closes the call. “Right. This one is a go. Now let’s see. Edmure!”

A moment later, the thirty-something year old that had welcomed them in shows up on the doorstep — right, he _did_ say that was the name.

“Yes?”

“I have two people who are bringing their nephews who should fit right in, but like… can’t we just call Robb and Jon and ask her to call _their_ friends? And the others too?”

“You mean — hm. Well, they _do_ know — wait, I’ll just call them.”

He leaves, grabbing his phone, and a moment later he’s talking to this Robb that Jaime supposes has to be his nephew or _something_ , and he’s nodding all along, and then he says that sure, he can wait a moment for him, and then he nods _very_ eagerly as he says they’ll wait for them.

“Brienne, you’re a _genius_ ,” he says.

“Why, what’s the news?”

“Well, Jon was hosting some game afternoon with _all_ his friends, who — well. You _met_ Jon. His group of friends is basically _all_ the people in his class that others don’t think are cool enough, so they _did_ agree at once and they said they’ll be here in a moment, Robb said he’d ask his siblings and apparently Sansa is outraged that this happened and she agreed to come, Arya said that she was in for the free food and Bran said it sounded horrible and he’d tag along as well, and Bran was with those two other friends of his, shit, the Reeds, and they agreed to come, and Robb said he was going to drag that other friend of his who lives next door along regardless of what he said, so — you have three, we have twelve which makes fifteen, so — well. Would that be enough?”

Jaime immediately nods. “Sure. I mean, I had invited twenty from his class, so that about would do. Shit, how fucking _efficient_ are you guys?”

“ _She_ is,” Edmure says, “I wouldn’t have even known where to start.”

She shrugs, her cheeks going slightly darker, and oh, in dreams she didn’t have freckles on them — but in real life she _does_ and he can’t help thinking they look _right_ on her.

“Hey,” he says, his voice dropping. “Now it’s not the best time, but — _later_?”

She smiles back at him, tentatively. “Of course,” she says, and then goes back inside the room and kneels back down next to whichever pile of books Tyrion picked and for a moment Jaime feels so relieved he can barely breathe.

She’s _here_. And from the way Tyrion’s talking to her, the moment he finds out _she_ is his soulmate, he won’t be the person complaining, not that it’s not good because after all Jaime doesn’t care about anyone else’s opinion.

Shit.

He found her.

Or maybe _she_ found him.

—

Now, it’s not that he hadn’t trusted her to salvage the party.

Except that it’s not just about _salvaging_.

Her two friends show up with the six-year old niece and eight-year old nephew of one of them though it’s from different brothers, apparently, and Jaime immediately realizes why Brienne had to reassure them — the girl, Shireen, has the entire left side of her face covered in a scar that looks like a horrible chicken pox or measles souvenir, and he’s pretty sure she gets her fair shit from her peers for it, but the moment she introduces herself to Tyrion and informs him that she really loves _The Hobbit_ he looks at her like he’d kill for her or _something_ of the kind, so that’s good, he supposes. The boy, Edric, isn’t _such_ a nerd but he has read his Tolkien, so that goes over well either. Then a short while later the entire room fills up with a bunch of teens — the eldest Stark kid has the same auburn hair and blue eyes of the other owners and he shows up with a friend who has to be a bit older than him with dark hair and eyes who also proclaims that his birthday parties were _always_ shitty and he’s glad to liven up the situation.

The other eldest Stark, Jon, shows up dressed like an early nineties grunge reject and with four other friends, three guys and a redheaded girl, who have more or less the same aesthetic except not as terribly in your face. The two Stark girls couldn’t be more different — one looks like her older brother and showed up dressed in some pretty frilly blue dress with freaking homemade muffins that _she_ apparently baked, her sister is dressed with what looks like Jon’s hand-me-downs and proceeds to inform Tyrion that assuming people are stupid is the best way to get on in life before helping herself to one. Their younger brother is actually a lot more polite, same as the two friends he brings with who _have_ to be siblings, and it turns out he’s _another_ Tolkien nerd. Jaime can’t help wondering how the hell they found the most likely only three Tolkien nerds under the age of fifteen in the entire city and put them all in the same place and then he decides that he doesn’t give a shit, not when no one is looking like they were dragged here against their will.

For that matter, they’re all actually pretty good sports — he’s one hundred percent sure that only the people under the age of ten actually _care_ about Brienne’s treasure hunt, but everyone else pretends they do, and _that_ goes over swimmingly on top of taking a fair amount of time because apparently she managed to make the riddles hard enough that it takes the entire room two hours to solve them. Tyrion also about screeches when he finds out that the treasure is _also_ the One Ring replica — shit, she really did do her job right, didn’t she?

Also, it turns out that everyone stopped to get presents, so while a third of them are books Tyrion already has (which was a given, since all of them only knew that he likes dragons and Jaime figures that if you’re in a hurry to get a book you might not look into finding something obscure) it doesn’t matter because he’s overjoyed they actually _did_ get him something that he likes (which is most likely sad because nine year olds shouldn’t be surprised someone took their tastes into account when buying them a present, but he hasn’t been able to fix that _yet_ and he doubts he ever will), the food is _really damn good_ and by the time everyone has crashed and burned and they polished off a cake that Jaime had ordered for _thirty_ people figuring kids might want seconds he decides that maybe _this_ was better than whatever would have happened with Tyrion’s idiotic classmates.

Never mind that Renly does come up to him to inform him that his niece apparently is terrible at making friends so if everyone’s fine with it and her father is fine with it it wouldn’t be a bad idea if she and Tyrion hung out once in a while, and considering that one of the reasons Jaime thought the party might be a good idea was that he knows his brother really doesn’t have… close friends or anything in his class, he’s more than happy to say he’ll be glad to arrange it. They exchange numbers and say they’ll write each other and he feels like he’s just run a marathon when Edmure shows up and suggests to close off the evening with some spin the bottle game that Jaime isn’t really sure he wants to be a part of —

“Hey,” Brienne says, showing up at his side, “maybe we _could_ talk now. Don’t worry, he’s good at _that_.”

“Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely, let’s — _let’s_ ,” he says, hating how unsure he sounds, but he just can’t wrap his head around how he’s been around her for a few hours but it feels like she _always_ has been there somehow, and when they get out of the restaurant and into the cool air outside, he can see that her cheeks are flushed and that she looks a tad more insecure than she had inside the restaurant.

“So,” he says, “long time no see?”

“Maybe,” she agrees, “except that, you know, I did dream of you. But you were older. You did tell me that I looked like someone else, just younger?”

“Yeah,” Jaime agrees. “Why, did the same happen with me?”

Brienne nods. “Yes. I mean, it’s obvious that it was _you_ , the hair was the same and the eyes were the same and the _face_ was, but — you were older, it was the Middle Ages or _something_ , you were dressed like a knight, you had a white armor and a white cloak and a golden hand. And a beard. And maybe your hair was a bit shorter.”

 _What_ —

“Imagine that,” he says, “it was the same with you. I mean, you were… older, and taller, and with more muscle, I guess, and you were a blue armor with this — really badass sword. It had a gold hilt shaped like a lion with rubies on it. But you also looked like one of those Arthurian knights. I used to think, like one of the Arthurian knights that actually went on quests instead of destroying the realm.”

She laughs at that, and he thinks he really loves how her laugh sounds —

“I thought the same about you.”

“… You _did_?” He breathes, moving closer.

“Yeah. I thought — he looks like the kind of knight who finds the Graal eventually,” she says, blushing a bit harder, and shit but she has such astonishing eyes, he can’t —

He takes a step forward, moves a hand to her face. She sighs at that, just before doing the same, her fingers touching the back of his head, touching his hair gently, and _fuck_ it feels good, and it feels _familiar_ —

“You know,” he says, “it feels — it feels like — I could swear that I knew you _before_ , somehow. Does it make sense or am I just ranting?”

“No,” she says. “I mean, you’re not. You feel right,” she says, sounding surprised at saying it out loud, “you did in those dreams. And you do now.” He can barely hear her now, and he doesn’t mind that he has to look up at her slightly for their eyes to meet properly.

“You do, too,” he says. “And — I didn’t want you to be just a dream.”

“Me neither,” she replies, and then she’s leaning down, tentatively —

He goes up on his feet and kisses her, elation taking hold of his body as she immediately holds back to him and kisses him back, and _oh_ , her lips are full and warm against his and it’s obvious that she’s never kissed anyone before him but that’s all right because he hasn’t either and then she holds him close to him, and her arms are strong but gentle and she’s so _warm_ and gentle, as she was in that first dream, and when she moves back he just wants to kiss her _again_ —

“You know,” he says instead, “what if we were lovers in another life? Because I wouldn’t have bet on such a good first kiss, but it just… felt like I knew how to do it.”

“Wait, it was yours too?” She sounds surprised. Of course she would be.

“I wanted to wait,” he says.

Fuck, he thinks as she smiles wide enough to show her teeth, she does _really_ have the most astonishing eyes. “You’re — not wrong. It felt like I knew what to do, too,” she admits. “I don’t know about — other lives, but I think I quite like you in _this_ one.”

“I think I do, too,” he says, and then he decides that he can kiss her again, and _again_ , and then he could bring her home and they could have a serious talk after his brother inevitably crashes from the excitement —

But for now, he’s just really glad that he doesn’t have to hope that he might dream about her soon.

He likes her a lot better now that she’s real.

End.


End file.
